Exam day

My flight has just landed in San Francisco, on schedule, at 5:15 p.m. In this twilight zone I am convinced that before I reach my final destination for this day, it will become dark.
When I boarded the plane earlier today, I was so full of expectation. Before I left my home this morning I had placed a copy of my will on my kitchen table, another in my NIV Study Bible on the bookshelf above my desk. I brewed a pot of coffee that I poured into a Thermos, and put it together with a bag of nuts and fruit, a couple of USB sticks, my passport, and my laptop, in my backpack. I zipped my brown carry-on bag, which was packed to the gills with all the reference literature I thought I might need for the exam, since we are not allowed to connect to the Internet. I locked both locks on the door to my apartment, and started out, wheeling my little brown bag after me down the street to the subway. A wonderful translation (Anne Born) of Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersson kept me company on the subway, at the gate, on the plane. I felt I was prepared.
The first leg of the flight went well, though I made a formatting error (forgot to double space and leave a 6 cm margin for comments) on the legal part of the exam and had to add a note to the Examiner.
When I boarded the second leg of this long journey between Stockholm and San Francisco, via Chicago, I happened to stumble over another passenger who mentioned that he was on his way to his mother’s funeral. When I offered him words to the same effect his reply was simply “I don’t want t to talk about it”, which made sense to me. I proceeded to take my seat on the other side of the aisle.

Ode to FRA

Is this the beginning of fraternity, eternity? I can see that you too are up well past midnight though I don't have access to any of the IPs that you are now plugged into in order to monitor international traffic, around the clock. I have evidence that you savor everything I write, whether I save it for you or not. I can see that you read it all whether it is addressed to you or not. Does that make you feel better? All those people, subject to a hell that cannot be explained rationally, simply documented in the underworld of your quasi-professional claims, legally aided these days by ISPs. Read what Kristina Lugn said in Hundstunden or in "Hej då, ha det så bra"
It's all there. It's all been said before by someone else.
Try using the first person, singular, next time you tap her words.

Original sin?

I wouldn’t have noticed the garland of pink roses beside the redwood coffin that held mother Anne’s corpse, had my Swedish sister-in-law not mentioned it as we were leaving the cemetery. She told me that her own mother had extended her condolences to "our family" by ordering a wreath with the epithet “Goodbye Anne, queen of the family” inscribed on its satin sash.
Later that same day, a couple of friends who had attended the funeral were leafing through the little album of photos that I had prepared for the gathering in my brother's home in San Francisco. The front cover of the album held a photo of mother Anne placing the first roses (which our father had once planted) of the year on his grave, which she knew would one day be her grave too. The back cover showed mother Anne, from a distance, crossing a stone bridge to a tiny islet in the Swedish archipelago. Most of the filler photos depicted mother Anne holding one of her grandchildren. In one photo she and two of her favorite grandsons are viewed from behind, sitting in the sand, gazing over a vast Pacific, into an expanse they all seem to realize is so much bigger than they. At the funeral gathering, my sister-in-law laid several boxes of photos of her own mother - vacationing on Eden Roc - alongside my little album. I looked at a couple of her photos and then politely put them to the side. Who and what had we gathered to remember? I was actually somehow relieved by the blatancy of my sister-in-law's revelation.
Last week, I met my sister-in-law’s mother in Stockholm, where we both live, for the first time in decades. When we spoke of mother Anne, she said “I’ll never forget the deeply haunting, penetrating look your mother gave me when I saw her the last time a month or so before her death. She seemed tired and didn’t want to talk to me.” Was it that four eyes had finally met in the abyss of female rivalry?
“…the women I interviewed spoke readily of competing with mothers, daughters, sisters, coworkers, and friends, many of them also seemed to buy into the myth of female solidarity, lamenting their own isolation from what they saw as a world of camaraderie and support,” writes Shapiro Barash, in her book Tripping the Prom Queen, adding “We can't understand female rivalry without understanding the pressure to conceal it.”

Back to work. Spent the weekend in my communal garden in Stockholm, laying a new stone path to the compost, preparing beds for the spring, cutting back roses, digging up weeds and ivy roots, and cutting grass. The sun was warm, the air balmy, and the sparkling waters of Lake Mälaren dazzling. Thanks M for all your good gardening tips, solid stance, and strong arms.

The root of the rose?

When I brought a bouquet to my old friend Gösta the other day, he asked: "Where is the root of the rose?" Typical Gösta, I thought to myself. We see the patterns of the blossom, the leaves, but the root? At age 98, Gösta remains full of questions. That's why I like to visit him at the assisted living facility in a suburb of Stockholm.
Since he's been reading Bhagavad Gita and Granth Sahib of late, he's particularly curious about Vox Pacis, and the cantata, "A challenge to humanity", which I've been rehearsing intensively these past few weeks. He talks about the challenges of ecumenism and his concern about the Church, for which he is personally so grateful as his own life draws to a close, for its inability to alter its approach to dialogue in the face of globalism. He emhasizes the challenges of "ethics versus loyalty".

Only the week before, I had taken the afternoon off from my regular job to rehearse together with solists and ensembles representing the major religions of the world. With no time for lunch, I grabbed an ice cream cone on the go, and was just finishing it when I caught site of one of the priests in my parish.
I noted that he was examining with delight the front end of a German tourist bus parked in front of the Swedish National Museum. Since his behavior reminded me of that of my brothers, I stepped off to the side to allow myself to be fascinated by his all too familiar boyish fascination. It was a German vehicle, and everything from the license plate, to the grid, tire, and the half-hidden front suspension, appeared of interest. In the process of observing him, I had evidently become an unwanted witness, because when he lifted his sight from the chassis and I could attract his attention long enough to say hello, the otherwise friendly priest became suddenly abrupt, in a hurry, and unable to refrain from a caustic comment about the luxury of my indulgence. I got the hint and moved on.
Ethics versus loyalty?
A couple of days later, one of his colleagues, another priest asked: "Är du fast här nu." ("Are you fixed/solid/attached/stationary here [in the Catholic Church] now?). I couldn't help disclose my dumbfoundedness: "Fixed, solid, attached?", whereupon the priest responded: "Well I haven't seen you here for such a long time and was wondering." It seems that some men become troubled when they're not sure when and where a female is going to turn up. "Such a long time" happened to have been just two weeks, but that seemed like superfluous information.
Loyalty vs. ethics?

After a year of grief

A year of Magical thinking (a la Joan Didion) and distancing.

In the garden

At the waterfall